as autumn colors fall
by AntaresTheEighthPleiade
Summary: Wirt is tired of people fearing him and tries to improve 'the Pilgrim's' reputation. Results are mixed. Part of The Pilgrim's Progress.


as autumn colors fall

Wirt is nervous. Nervousness is hardly an unusual state of being for him, but tonight it is more acute, more immediate than usual, considering his current plan.

This is dumb. This is really, really dumb.

He's going to do it anyways. He has to start somewhere.

"Hello, little one," Wirt calls, and this is going to go terribly wrong somehow, he just knows it. No, no, focus. He doesn't need that kind of distraction right now. He just needs to focus on looking and acting as harmless as possible despite the fact that he's ridiculously tall and has weird glowing demon eyes (he's trying to dim the glow as much as he can without shapeshifting them away entirely, but that doesn't work very well) and he's wearing all black and they're in the middle of a spooky forest in the middle of night.

"Who're you?" says the child. Suspicion is writ large on his face, which is completely fair. Wirt would be suspicious too.

Wirt kneels, holds the Dark Lantern out between them. Its light is deliberately muted so as to not illuminate his antlers. Wirt has a nasty feeling that the kid will run if he sees the antlers. "I'm the Pilgrim. What about you?"

"I'm Matthias." The boy crosses his arms. "Are you a monster? My mama says that there are monsters in the forest at night."

Wirt flinches, his light flickering. That's the crux of the matter, isn't it? But he doesn't think that this little boy (five, he thinks; definitely a year or two younger than Greg) is interested in his philosophical speculations, identity crises, existential fears, and endless self-recriminations. "No, I'm not a monster. I take care of the forest, and my—" creepy turtle minions "—friends told me that someone was wandering through the woods. I'm here to bring you home."

The trees hum their approval.

"You have monster eyes," the child points out, still leery.

"Yeah, I know. They help me see in the dark." (It would be easy to shapeshift, to hide behind his human façade. Wirt quashes the urge. He needs to do this as he is.)

"…and you promise that you won't eat me or take me to a witch or turn me into a tree?"

"I promise."

"Okay." Matthias nods imperiously. "Then I'll protect you from monsters if you use your monster eyes to get us out of the forest."

The kid's bravado is impressive. If Wirt couldn't smell the fear, he'd think that Matthias was completely unperturbed by the darkling wood. "It's a deal."

They walk for a time, Wirt a silent shadow with a lantern in his hand, Matthias a bouncing chatterbox who babbles on about anything and everything that crosses his mind. He makes Greg look quiet, Wirt thinks, and loneliness pangs in his heart. His brother is safe in the other world, fast asleep and probably dreaming about frogs.

A glint of something up ahead. Wirt slows to a stop. Matthias nearly walks into him. "What's wrong?" he asks, alarmed. The scent of his fear spikes. "Is it a monster?"

"No. I think it's a search party."

"I don't see anything."

"I have good vision," Wirt reminds him.

Soon they're close enough that Matthias can see the searchers too. He shouts his joy and runs towards them. Wirt follows at a more sedate pace, stopping at the edge of the shadows.

This is his last chance to change forms. They haven't noticed his shimmering eyes yet, much less his still-hidden antlers. Everyone is too focused on the happily chattering Matthias.

Wirt clenches his fists and remains in his true form.

"Thank you for saving my son," a man gushes, rising to his feet with Matthias in his arms. "I—"

Wirt can tell the exact second that the man notices his unnatural eyes. So can the other three rescuers, though they don't know what his sudden horrified silence is all about until they turn, staring in the direction of his gaze. They see his eyes, too.

One man—Wirt thinks he might be Matthias's uncle, he looks so much like the boy's father—lifts his lantern high.

"I'm not the Beast," Wirt tells them solemnly. He can't tell if they're listening or paralyzed in terror, but he keeps speaking nonetheless. "I'm his successor. The Beast is dead."

Matthias's father is backing away, clutching his child to his chest. "I'm not here to hurt anybody," Wirt continues.

Something bangs. Wirt stumbles backwards as something small barrels into his chest—literally _into_ his chest. His skin tears; blood leaks from the opening.

"Did you just shoot me?" Wirt demands, incredulous. It doesn't hurt, which is weird. He's probably in shock.

The fellow in question drops his pistol in favor of the hatchet at his side. "RAAAAAAAAHHH!"

The shadows coalesce around Wirt as he scrambles aside. His eyes go white.

Matthias is screaming, the sound fading into the distance as his father sprints away with the boy in his arms. Wirt is alone with the panicking hatchet wielder.

He _knew_ something like this to happen.

"I don't want to fight," he hisses, withdrawing into the trees. "I'm not the Beast, I'm the Pilgrim. I just wanted to help that kid. I'm benevolent!"

"DIE BEAST DIE!" shrieks the human, who has plainly been paying no attention whatsoever. He flails with his hatchet. Its blade comes dangerously close to the Pilgrim's arm.

That's enough.

The hatchet's handle seems almost to explode with new life. It thickens, branches and twigs bursting from its sides, roots trailing from its base. Buds materialize on the edges of the twigs and flourish into healthy green leaves. Bark clothes the blade, rendering it useless, and the new tree takes root, burrowing into the soil.

The man is frozen. Rank terror rises from him in waves.

And then he passes out.

Wirt gapes, not quite able to comprehend how disastrously this all turned out. Sure, he hadn't been expecting an enthusiastic welcome—he'd really just thought that they would freeze up or possibly run—but to try to _kill_ him? Everything about this is terrible.

The Pilgrim closes his eyes. His wound is beginning to bother him. Is he going to have to dig the bullet out himself? He really hopes not. What sort of healing does he have, anyways? Hopefully he can't actually get infected from this.

Not for the first time, Wirt wishes that his new life came with an instruction manual.

The pain is getting worse. Wirt gasps, clutches at his chest. He's still standing, so the bullet obviously hadn't punctured his heart (plus, it hit him on the right side of his body), but maybe it had done something to his lungs? Yeah, it had probably done something to his lungs. He should abandon this guy (he'll be fine) and go find a doctor.

One last jolt of agony, and something small and roundish pops out of his wound, into his palm. The bullet. Wirt gapes, then turns hopefully to the injury. Alas, his wound is still open, blood running down his chest and further ruining his shirt. At least the pain has lessened to something much more manageable.

Wirt weighs his options. He could go find… wait, no he can't. His blood is black and oily and makes things grow when it hits the ground. Only a very obtuse physician would fail to notice that. So his only real options are staying here until the hatchet-wielder wakes up or going elsewhere to try and treat his wound himself. The bleeding is slowing, though—not that it had been draining him quickly to begin with—so he opts to wait a few minutes. It's not like he knows anything about first aid. He'll probably be fine as long as he keeps pressure (and a bunched-up wad of his ruined shirt) on the wound.

His patience is rewarded. The unconscious man stirs soon after Wirt makes his decision. He groans softly, eyes fluttering open. Then he sees the unnaturally-colored eyes staring at him and goes completely rigid.

"Are you all right?" Wirt asks. He's trying to not sound snappish, but, well, this guy _shot_ him. His injury might have stopped bleeding, but it hasn't stopped hurting. Still, he's trying to make people understand that he is not the Beast, that he is a good person despite his predecessor's actions. (Mostly good. Well, better than the last Caretaker. No, no, remember your talk with Beatrice about Adelaide and that other witch.)

The man scrambles away from him, backing into a tree. No surprise there, though it _is_ depressing.

Wirt sighs. "Your friends are that way," he says, pointing in the direction they'd fled.

Naturally, when the man runs, he goes in the exact opposite direction.

* * *

The scent of the fire lingers in the air. It's not strong enough for a human nose to detect, not unless that human has their face half-buried in the ashes, but it's quite clear to Wirt. He smells other things, too: animal musk, earthy dung, old hay. This patched of the burnt ground was a barn, he thinks, and hopes that the animals got out all right. He can't smell any charred meat, though, nor can he see any blackened bones, so he thinks that they must have gotten away. The house is safe too—he suspects that the wind was blowing in the other direction. It's just the barn and garden that are completely ruined.

Perhaps he can't do much about the barn, but he can help with the garden.

Wirt smiles, presses his hand against the soil. The stems of the plants are gone, but the roots run deep. Tomatoes, sweet corn, Swiss chard, snap peas, celery, broccoli and cauliflower…. He can feel their singed remnants, the last vestiges of life within them.

He closes his eyes, breathes in, feels for the roots in the soil. They perk up immediately. He might be strongest in the forest, but all plants take strength from him. These garden vegetables are no exception.

Pale green stalks rise from the earth, blossoming, leafing, shedding their petals as they rise to their former height. Then they stretch still further, fat and strong and healthy.

Wirt brushes off a friendly tomato vine, gently untwining it from his spindly fingers. He feels once more at the soil, is pleased to note that this sudden expenditure of growth hasn't drained it too much. Not that it was in good shape to begin with—Wirt's noticed that the very earth feels tired, drained, all throughout the Unknown, like it's been working too hard and too long to produce life. Maybe he can learn how to fix that, or maybe it will get better on its own as he cleanses corruption.

"You!" roars a voice. "Out of my—"

Wirt jumps nearly out of his skin, hands scrambling instinctively for the Lantern as his covering of shadows wraps itself more tightly around him. Wide white eyes meet the terrified brown gaze of the middle-aged woman in the doorway.

She shrieks, high and full of terror. "Lucas, get the shotgun!"

The nearly-healed remnants of the bullet wound in Wirt's chest twinge. He recovered from the injury at inhuman speed and without complications, but that doesn't mean he wants to be shot again. Wirt dims his Lantern, averts his eyes, and melts into the night.

The woman fires a few rounds after him anyways.

* * *

"You want me to meet your grandparents?"

"That's what I _said_," Beatrice huffs.

Wirt folds his arms. "Beatrice, you and Rusty are the only ones in your family who don't get even a little jittery around me. And Rusty is a dog."

"They're getting used to you," she grumbles.

"Slowly."

"Which is better than not at all. But seriously, Wirt, come and meet them. I already told them you're hanging around."

"What?" Wirt jerks away from the aspen sapling he's been tending.

"Yeah, I told them I'd drag you in kicking and screaming if you didn't come voluntarily." Beatrice flashes him a grin. "Or we could do that anyways if you're worried about scaring them."

"You're a terrible person."

"Yeah, I know. Now come on." She grabs his wrist and starts walking home.

Wirt smiles and follows.

* * *

This is without a doubt Wirt's favorite good publicity scheme yet. He's helping lots of people with something that, to the best of his knowledge, only he can do. He gets to sing while doing it, partly because songs help with magic of this scale and partly because people will know him by his voice. (Admittedly, the knowledge will frighten them, but hopefully they won't be too scared; they're in their houses, after all.) And, best of all, he doesn't have to interact with anybody, so there is a very low probability of getting shot and/or making a fool of himself.

He's in an orchard, standing among hundreds of apple trees, many of which—far too many—are sick. Crown rot, according to the gossip that Wirt had eavesdropped on that afternoon. He's not quite certain what crown rot is, but the orchard hands said that it was irreversible and would kill all the infected trees. The entire orchard might be lost, right now at harvest time. The situation is terrible, of course, but, well, silver linings.

So here he is, wrapped in a comfortable layer of shadows, trespassing in a dying apple orchard at midnight, singing of health and renewal as he wanders among the trees. Power flows out from him, soothing pain, bolstering defenses, tipping the scale. It will take a few rounds to beat back the disease completely, one or two more to ripen the fruits until they're ready for the picking, but he can already detect improvement. It's a good feeling.

Wirt smiles as he walks along. It's a lovely night: bright stars, a milky half-moon, crickets chirping accompaniment to his song.

For a few minutes, all is peaceful. Wirt is getting the hang of driving back the rot; his magic is becoming quicker, more efficient.

Then the baying of hounds splits the night.

Wirt freezes mid-note, his breath cut short. His eyes form perfect circles of shock and disbelief. Perhaps he should be afraid—those animals sound like they mean business—but all he can manage is incredulity. "Oh, _come on_."

The dogs are getting closer. Wirt weighs his options. Should he run? No, he's pretty sure that running is supposed to kick the canine predatory instinct into overdrive. But he's fast now, and he'd have a head start. He probably should run… but there's a small kernel of stubbornness that doesn't want to move.

So he'll stay.

He really hopes that this doesn't end in him having to fight a bunch of enormous killer dogs.

The pack lopes into the row. Wirt stays still, the Dark Lantern in his hand. A deep breath, and roots ripple out of the ground, entangling paws, tripping them up. Yipping, the animals collide with each other. Their attempts to escape the literal dogpile would be comical if they weren't so enormous. But Wirt isn't just standing by. At his silent command, roots curl around the animals' legs. It isn't enough to hurt them, but it's sufficient to keep them in place.

Two of the four dogs start whining, tails tucking between their legs. One erupts into frantic barking as she tries to escape. The last starts chewing at the roots, which doesn't have much effect this close to the Master of the Trees.

"Nice doggies," Wirt says.

The angry dog bares her teeth. Now that she's closer, he can see that she is… an elkhound, he thinks. He will leave that detail out when he tells Beatrice what went wrong this time; she has plenty of deer jokes (and, even worse, reindeer jokes, thanks to Greg's big mouth) and he is _not_ going to give her more ammunition.

Plus, they might not even be elkhounds. He doesn't know a whole lot about dog breeds.

The angry dog is growling now. At least she's stopped barking.

It takes three more rounds before the apple orchard is completely recovered. Wirt goes through once again just to make certain he hasn't missed any crown rot, but the trees are all healthy. They thank him as he passes.

Then it's time to release the dogs. One of them has actually fallen asleep. Two turn around, presumably to make their way home. The fourth chases him all the way to the wall.

* * *

Wirt is very, very sick of people freaking out and running away whenever they see him in his true form. It's beginning to make him cranky and irrational—at least, that is what he will say when he explains this to Enoch.

And, well, maybe it's a little funny, too.

The Highwayman is lying in wait near the Endicott-Grey manor (manors?). It would seem that Quincy and Margueritte have had a guest almost as rich as they are, and now the fancy carriage is making its slow way through the woods, irresistible prey for the bandit. As soon as the travelers reach the ambush site, the Highwayman jumps out towards the carriage, revolver at his hip, bludgeon swinging for the driver's head.

Any other day, he would land on the seat, right next to the startled driver. He'd knock the man unconscious before robbing the passengers blind. That day, though, his club breaks into bloom right as he jumps. Startled, he drops it. The Highwayman's a professional, though, so he lands his leap and goes for his gun.

"_Ahem_," Wirt says loudly, stepping out of the shadows. He might as well be a shadow himself: Darkness cloaks him from head to toe, obscuring his features, a stark contrast to the bright October day. Glowing white eyes narrow slightly as he glares disapprovingly at the robber. "Robbery is _illegal_. Also, I would highly recommend that you not shoot me."

No one moves. Even the horses are still, though that's probably just because they're confused by the sudden extra passenger. The Highwayman looks so stunned, so absolutely flabbergasted, that Wirt can't help himself.

"B̟̣̱̱͝o̗̤̗̖͖̼͖o̬̮͔͇͖͢."

The Highwayman actually squeaks before he runs for it.

The driver makes the ward-evil.

"You're welcome," Wirt sighs, and slips back into his forest.

* * *

Pottsfield isn't so bad once you get used to the idea of skeletons in pumpkin-and-corn-husk costume-suits. The people are polite, they're friendly, and they're only a little bit jumpy around him. Their stares still make him want to bolt like a frightened deer, but they're more curious than terrified, which is a nice change. Enoch must have spread word that he's here to help them.

The villagers' vegetables are beginning to look a little worse for wear. Enoch's power lies in preservation and sustainment and renewal, but the last aspect is limited to awakening townsfolk from their occasional 'naps.' It will still be a couple weeks before the pumpkins are big and ripe enough to wear, so Wirt extends little shoots of power as he passes, fixing discolorations, strengthening shells, and trying unsuccessfully to ignore their hollow-eyed stares.

Enoch is waiting for him at the barn, which Wirt thinks is rather unnecessary. They could have just as easily met on the outskirts of town. It would have saved him a lot of discomfort. Still, he supposes that seeing is believing. This way the people of Pottsfield can lay eyes (eye sockets?) on the Beast's successor, antlers and all.

He still keeps himself cloaked in shadows, though.

It turns out that Enoch has good reason to meet him in town. He's gathered up a handful of citizens who give him stilted reports on what the harvest currently looks like, and though he doesn't say it, they both know the townsfolk are more comfortable on their own home turf. Wirt listens, nodding whenever it seems appropriate, and grumpily reflects that he could have figured out the state of the fields himself without any of this interpersonal interaction. But that's not the point of this, is it? Enoch had suggested coming to visit in broad daylight, letting them see that he's different. Wirt, reasonably certain that no Pottsfielder would attack him with their mayor present, had agreed.

So he listens to a long-winded old man go on and on and on about corn height and reminds himself that this could be so much worse.

* * *

The harvest is in full swing when Wirt stumbles across the elderly couple. He finds the woman shouting for her ox, threatening to geld it if it doesn't get its tail back here right now. The ox does not oblige.

So Wirt hunts down the ox and guides it back to its mistress. He's a bit leery of approaching the enormous animal at first, and the grass around its hooves stirs in response. Reassured, Wirt goes over. The creature is surprisingly placid as he leads it home.

As they get closer to the old woman (now joined by her husband), Wirt slows a little. His antlers are on full display, the leaves as red as rubies. His hair is partly red, too, with strands of gold and orange among the portion that remains brown. (He's worried that his hair will fall off when his leaves do.) His eyes glow blue yellow pink, their light dim in the brightness of the day. He is very obviously not human, but the elderly couple doesn't seem to notice. Maybe they are just really engrossed in their conversation.

Wirt clears his throat.

They turn to him and… don't freak out at all. "Is that you, Herbert?" the man asks.

"…No." This should be a welcome change, them not running in terror, but it's mostly just unnerving. "I'm the Pilgrim. I found your ox." Because they don't seem to have noticed that, either.

Their faces split into grins. "Splotches, you old rascal!" the woman exclaims.

Splotches lows.

"Thank you, thank you, young fellow," the man says. He steps forward, and Wirt realizes for the first time that his eyes are milky with cataracts. His wife's are the same. They must be either blind or close to it. "I thought we'd have to wait until our grandsons got here to find this scalawag."

"They're coming to help with the harvest," the woman explains.

Wirt looks around. Sure enough, their field is full of wheat.

From there, the conversation turns to how they're unprepared for winter, and they'd hate to be even more of a burden on their poor hardworking grandsons, and we hate to ask you this so soon after you found Splotches for us, dear, but do you think you could chop a few logs for us? We'll pay you, of course, and give you some of Clarabelle's famous stew for dinner. Such a sweet young man. You know, we have several pretty granddaughters….

Wirt makes his escape at this point. There's a fallen tree nearby, dead but still dense rather than rotted. Something in him hisses at the mere thought of raising an ax to _any_ tree, even a dead one, so he spends his short journey deep in thought. By the time he arrives, he thinks he has an idea.

He kneels next to the fallen colossus, fingers splaying against the bark. He reaches out with his mind, pulling here, unbinding there. The wood is dead, but it still obeys.

The tree falls apart, easily splitting into halved logs small enough for two shrunken elders to easily hoist into their fires. It's taken him ten, maybe fifteen minutes.

Wirt grins.

Despite his skinniness, Wirt finds that he can lift a surprising amount of weight. It still takes him awhile to bring all the logs to the woodpile, but that's all back and forth. Then he's off to find another tree.

The afternoon passes steadily. Wirt takes a slightly different route each time he visits a log-tree, soothing the forest to sleep. Leaves fall where he passes, but not from sickness. They're cool beneath his bare feet.

He isn't paying too much attention to footsteps, so he doesn't notice that the two people approaching him aren't the elderly couple. Not until Humphrey rounds the corner of the house with….

The man who had shot him, then attacked him with a hatchet, gapes in pure horror.

"And this," says Humphrey, "is the nice young man who—"

The gun-and-hatchet man (Herbert?) throws his grandfather over his shoulder and sprints for the house, screaming about how the Beast's son is stalking him.

…Wait, _what_?

* * *

The good news is that the rumor mill is finally catching on to the fact that the Pilgrim and the Beast aren't the same. A few people might have even figured out that Wirt isn't evil, though those folk are _very_ few and far between.

The bad news is that most of the gossip about him is completely _terrible_.

The Pilgrim turned an innocent witch into edelwood when he was trying to help them get home. The Pilgrim kidnapped a little boy and was only driven off after being shot. The Pilgrim had blighted an entire orchard. Oh, and he's apparently the Beast's unholy hellspawn. Mustn't forget that.

After he can think about _that_ rumor without wanting to scream and vomit at the same time, he has to admit (if only grudgingly) that it makes sense. He _does_ have the Beast's powers and a pair of antlers and weirdly colored glowing eyes. And if you don't know about how the Dark Lantern is passed on, it makes sense that it would stay in the family rather than passing onto some random nobody from another world.

Sometimes, Wirt really hates his life.

He wants to go and sulk for awhile, maybe bang his head against a tree for a few minutes. Instead, he grits his teeth and does his best to correct the rumors whenever he can. He lingers in the town's marketplace for the rest of the morning and afternoon, speaking with the farmers in their stalls and attempting to explain. It's made more difficult by the fact that he can't exactly tell them who he is, not without inciting a riot. (Wirt does not doubt that the truth of his identity would incite a riot. They'd probably chase him out with torches and pitchforks like he's Frankenstein's monster, and then word would get out that the Pilgrim can shapeshift to look like a mostly-ordinary young man and people would become even more afraid of him.)

Not many people believe Wirt. This hardly surprises him, but it's still very frustrating.

Evening arrives. The townsfolk and visitors, including Wirt, congregate inside a pub. Squaring his shoulders, the Pilgrim approaches a table full of people whom he'd almost convinced.

Minutes turn to hours as they finish their food and start drinking. (Wirt abstains. He has no idea if he can get drunk, and this doesn't seem like a good time to find out.) The people—mostly human, with a pair of remarkably dapper otters for variety—become steadily less willing to listen as the evening wears on. Voices rise, but Wirt, stubborn and exasperated, keeps going.

That is how he ends up starting a bar fight and spending the night in the local jail.

Yes, Wirt decides sourly, glaring at the cell walls, his life is terrible.

* * *

Later, Wirt will learn that learn that this sort of thing doesn't happen often, and it's ridiculously improbable that he's encountered two such cases in roughly a year. Animals have enough sense to avoid eating the black turtles, and sapient beings are warned from the cradle to not devour the Beast's minions. Witches are the only ones who can safely consume the black turtles' flesh, and even they do it carefully. But, once in a blue moon, there comes an idiot who thinks that the black turtles are the source of witches' power and decides to eat them.

These attempts do not end well.

"So," Wirt says to the turtle on his shoulder as he jogs through the woods, "how exactly do I fix this?"

The turtle informs him that the Old Master would just turn eaters to edelwood.

"Of course he did," Wirt grumbles. "I don't suppose you know how to change this lady back to normal?"

The turtle doesn't even know if that's possible.

"Well," Wirt sighs, "let's hope that we get to her before she actually eats her meal." He'd have preferred to reach her before she killed and started cooking one of his minions (they're starting to grow on him), but right now, he'll settle for not having to capture and rehabilitate a slavering deranged monster. But he's not hopeful.

They don't get there in time, because of course they don't.

The town (more of a hamlet, really, just a couple dozen houses between a stream and the forest and some farmland) is in chaos when Wirt and his reptilian passenger arrive. The turtle-eater is crouched hissing on the millhouse's roof. Her limbs are long, grotesquely long, her skin pale and webbed with black oil-filled veins, her teeth all crooked and jagged. A small mob (complete with torches and pitchforks, which Wirt just _knows_ will be turned against him. At least he can't see any guns) crowds at the building's base. They're arguing about whether or not they should pursue the turtle-eater or wait for her to come down voluntarily.

Wirt hides just beyond the treeline as he debates what to do. _Not_ turn her into edelwood, that's for certain. But the first thing is definitely to get her away from the mob so he can help her without worrying about the inevitable attack. He wants to wait for night, but that's still a couple of hours away and some of the townsfolk are very vocal about going up onto the roof. Wirt would prefer it if this ended without any fatalities.

Except it might be possible to create an artificial night. Shadows cling to Wirt, and he's found that he can move them around. (Greg, when he'd discovered that, had insisted on 'the world's best shadow puppet show EVER!' He hadn't even minded Wirt's lack of finesse, though Beatrice had made up for the boy's enthusiasm with sarcastic commentary.) He's never tried to call the darkness on such a scale, but maybe.

Wirt closes his eyes and _pulls_.

Startled shouts and frightened cries. Wirt opens his eyes to see that a deep gloom has fallen over this portion of the town, dim as twilight. But the torch fires shine brightly. Wirt winces but thickens the shadows a bit more.

The fires wink out. (Huh. He hadn't known he could do that.) The humans are almost blind, but Wirt's night vision is superb. He narrows his eyes to slits, calls another layer of shadows to cloak himself, and darts past the confused crowd into the millhouse. There's a lock on the door, so Wirt latches it behind him before ascending the stairs. Most of the shadows disperse, but he leaves the shade that covers his own form.

He's up now, there on the roof. The turtle-eater looks at him…

…and charges.

Wirt yells, automatically flinging himself to the side. The hissing creature is nimble, though, and easily swivels to follow him. Her jagged claws swipe right at Wirt's face. He stumbles back. "I'm trying to help you."

The turtle eater claws at him again. He weaves aside, blackberry vines springing from his footsteps. If he were thinking, he would have used something without thorns, but the branches tangling in the turtle-eater's are drawing oil-tainted blood. As soon as he realizes it, Wirt sends out a thought to make the thorns retreat even as the vines tighten. The outraged turtle-eater spits at him.

It is at this point that Wirt realizes he doesn't know what to do next. Why, why, _why_ is he so bad at thinking these things through?

This is also the point at which the first part of the mob arrives. The man at the front charges through the trapdoor, then takes stock of the scene before him and skids to a halt. The woman at his heels runs into him, knocking him a few steps forward. Pale-faced and rigid, she lowers her pitchfork, the prongs pointed not at the crazed turtle-eater but at the antlered shadow who just wants to help them.

The third person freezes when she's halfway through the trapdoor. She screams, the sound high and shrill.

"I'm not the Beast!" Wirt exclaims, hands fluttering back and forth. "I'm the Pilgrim, and I'm trying to—_don't you dare try to impale me_."

The first woman tries to look innocent.

"I'm trying to help," Wirt repeats, not taking his eyes off the lady's weapon. "You want her back to normal, right?"

A couple other heads peek out of the trapdoor. They retreat almost immediately to report to their fellows. The two humans on the roof remain rigid.

"So we all agree that we want her to not be…" Wirt gestures at his thrashing prisoner "…like this, and quite frankly, I've probably got a better chance of curing her than any of you."

Yet another person emerges from the trapdoor, and sure enough, he's charging at Wirt with a pitchfork. At least his torch is still out. "Get away from my sister, monster!"

"I'm not trying to hurt her!" he cries, but the man isn't listening. More blackberry vines lash out, wrap around him. "_Cheese and crackers_, how many times do I have to explain that?"

The overprotective brother gapes at him for a long moment before recovering. "And why should I believe you when you attacked me?"

"You tried to impale me," Wirt hisses. "Look, I'll let you go if you throw that thing off the roof, and then we can all talk about this like sane, rational adults."

The other man and woman are trying to inch away.

"You can fix her?" An older woman clambers onto the roof; she has the brother's ears and nose and coloring. She smells of fear, but sudden desperate hope gives her courage.

"Mother—" the man begins. She cuts him off with nothing more than a raised hand.

"Maybe," Wirt says, feeling obligated to remain honest. "I've never actually done this before and… don't actually know how. I just know that there's a way." He smiles, forgetting that they can't make out his expressions beneath the shadows wrapped around him.

"And… you are the Pilgrim?" Her words were slow, considering. "The Beast's…."

"_Successor_," Wirt interjects sharply. "We share no blood."

The man snorts. "Then why do you have his powers?"

"Because I killed him," Wirt replies flatly. His hands tighten ever so slightly on the handle of his Lantern, but he manages not to look down at it. They don't need to know his weakness.

There's fear in their eyes, but that's nothing new. They've probably been frightened since their kinswoman ate a black turtle and ended up like this. "I… he was trying to hurt my family, and then I stopped him, and then I was in denial for a few months. If there's anything I can do to help her, I will."

He calls the blackberry vines away from the man, the brother, who just wants to protect his sibling.

The man doesn't attack him again. He steps away from the vines, looking at his sister and at Wirt and back at his sister again. "If this doesn't work, I'll kill you," he vows softly. "Fix her. You have one day."

His mother huffs softly but doesn't disagree. They go over to the side of the roof, watching, waiting, hoping, speaking quiet words to the nervous onlooker who pops her head up to see what's going on.

Wirt approaches the prisoner, reaching out with his forest-sight. Corruption flows through her veins, a net of vines tighter and deadlier than the blackberries.

It would be easy to turn her to edelwood. She invited the forest magic in when she ate his turtle, and it needs some way to escape. That is why they change, Wirt realizes: the power tears them up inside, hurting mind and body and soul.

So he needs some other way to get it out of her. The magic won't leave her body naturally, but what if….

The blackberry bush had been thorned at first, had drawn a little bit of blood. It is tainted blood, stinking, red flecked with black. Wirt looks at the dried blood on the plant. Yes, it retains the corrupt energy even now that it's out of her body.

He can make this work, he thinks. He hopes. He just needs to figure out how to get all the corruption out through her scratches without exsanguinating her entirely. Except he hasn't figured out any way to move or manipulate the foulness without converting it to edelwood first, and he obviously isn't going to do that.

(A witch, screaming, pleading, falling completely silent.)

Wirt thinks over the process of creating edelwood, trying to isolate the exact method he uses to move corruption into the proper place. The trees tend to suck it up once they sprout, but he still needs to concentrate it before he can begin the process. He doesn't need to worry so much about concentrating the corruption, though, since the turtle-eater is filled to bursting with tainted magic.

Oh. Oh, duh. He's an idiot.

The turtle-eater's wounds have scabbed over. With a softly murmured apology, Wirt rips off one of the larger clots. Blood wells up, red and black. The turtle-eater screeches, a sound like nails on a chalkboard. Wirt flinches away from the sound, then steadies himself. He lays his hands on the opened wound.

He just has to make a little seedling right outside the turtle-eater's body, where blood pools on her skin, then siphon out the rest of the tainted magic through the wound. He can do that. It won't end up like the time with the witch.

(A tree just past the doorstep, screaming silently for all eternity, accusation in its hollow eyes. Guilt and shame and grief and _never again_.)

So Wirt pulls slowly and carefully, spinning the ugliness in the turtle-eater's blood into a little vine that he grasps loosely in his hand.

The turtle-eater goes completely limp, tongue lolling out, eyes dimming behind their lids. Her brother sucks in a breath. "What did you do?" he demands.

"I figured out how to help her," Wirt says. "Just… give me a few minutes. I need to focus."

"You heard him," the mother agrees. "Let him focus."

It gets easier as the minutes trickle by. Edelwood vines wrap around their master's form, leaves unfurling as red as rubies. They'll fall soon, but for now they stud his arms like gems.

Then it's over. The turtle-eater's unconscious body jerks, shudders, shrinks and distorts and recovers. She looks like her brother now, and her mother.

They rush towards her even as the blackberry vines recede. Wirt backs away, thinking of Greg and his own mother. He thinks that he's almost strong enough to visit them in the other world, though he doesn't dare stay too long.

But he has more immediate problems. There's still a mob lurking at the exit of this building just waiting for him to come down, and he's afraid that they'll come up again if they get impatient. So what's the best way to make his escape? He's a lot better at jumping now. If he gets a running start, he can probably pass over them all and land without hurting himself. Once he's on the ground, it will be easy to outpace them. Yes, that's what he'll do.

The turtle on Wirt's shoulder (he'd almost completely forgotten her presence) informs him that the humans seem to want to approach him, but they're not certain how. Wirt looks up, and sure enough, the little family is staring at him. They're not quite afraid anymore (well, not much), he thinks. They're more nervous, hesitant.

"What do you want in return?" the turtle-eater blurts out.

"Nothing," Wirt replies, startled.

"Nothing?" She's doubtful.

"We would rather not be in anyone's debt," the mother interjects smoothly.

More like they'd rather not be in _his_ debt. That's fine, completely _fine_. Wirt understands. "Well, if you're certain, I'd really appreciate it if you could spread the word that I'm not evil, or the Beast, or related to the Beast." He almost stops then, but another thought occurs. "And if you could ask the mob down there to step aside so I can get back to my forest, that would be great."

They still seem rather leery, but they're willing to accept his terms. The three slip out. A couple minutes later, the crowd disperses. They don't go far, but they're far enough away that Wirt is almost comfortable taking his leave. (He'd be more comfortable if they weren't all staring at him, but such is life.)

Then Wirt is in his forest, and he realizes with some surprise that the people had let him go. Warily, suspiciously, with no small amount of muttering, but they'd let him go peacefully, knowing full well that he isn't the Beast. He is the Pilgrim, and he is a completely different person from his predecessor. They understand this now, and they will spread the word.

Perhaps it isn't much, but it's a start.

* * *

Poor Wirt. Like, seriously, the kid's starting to wonder if maybe he's cursed. (He's not. I'm just a terrible person.)

This story takes place from late August to just before Halloween. I'm thinking that Halloween would be a good time for Wirt to visit his family in our world, don't you think?

Title comes from the song "Into the Unknown," played in the first and last episodes. All plants and plant diseases and stuff were selected after far too much research.

In the last couple months, a mini-fandom has somehow sprung up around this series. The Scribe_Smith on AO3 has begun converting my stories to a podcast series. OriliumButtons and foldedchip (also on AO3) wrote short stories that were inspired by these works. Magi Merlyn started a tumblr askblog, horned-pilgrim. Wittywerds on DA drew a picture inspired by the reunion scene in "going to the pasture." I'm... wow, just wow, super blown away by all their support, not to mention my lovely reviewers. You're all amazing, and your works are amazing, and I love them. Thank you!


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